By SCOTT SAALMAN
Scaramouch
Her name was Lady. The first childhood dog I clearly remember. A Collie. Looked just like TV’s Lassie. My Lady.
A rural route existence was a lonely one for a little boy, but Lady made me forget all that. She was my best friend. Our summer was spent exploring the southern Indiana countryside and lazily whiling away in the shade shifts until sunset and the flicker of fireflies, just a boy and his dog. Twilight knew no better best friends. Timmy and Lassie had nothing over us. I loved pulling the day’s ticks off her nightly, just as Mom did for me. My Lady.
One day, Lady went missing.
I inquired about her whereabouts. My straight-faced parents informed me that she was taken to the St. Meinrad seminary. They assured me the monks would take good care of Lady.
I don’t recall being told why Lady was taken to live with the monks. Had she killed a neighbor’s chicken? I’m not sure our neighbors even had chickens. Perhaps I am mixing that up with a Lassie episode. Seems like chickens were always dying on that show, with Lassie catching the blame before proving her innocence by the closing credits.
At the time, I would’ve preferred that Lady had been taken to “the farm” that I had always heard about. It seemed a better place for a dog, especially since I knew a lot of kids whose dogs had been taken there. I imagined a farm with tons of relocated dogs playing with one another. Never a lonely day on a dog farm. What a lovely thought.
My straight-faced parents told me maybe we could visit her sometime, but that never happened. Apparently, monks needed a lot of quiet time and seldom were allowed visitors. At least Lady was in a place where she was undeniably safe and loved.
Lady had successors, each outdoor dog meeting its violent demise. Rural routes can be tough on dogs. Patches was hit by a car, a little lifeless lump of white fur that I spotted in a snowy ditch. Barney met her tragic end in a neighbor’s barn while giving birth to her final litter of pups. Barney had popped out so many litters in her lifetime that she should’ve been in the Guinness Book of World Records. (My Aunt Carol, knowing we were heartbroken about Patches, found Barney for us. She told us Barney was a male. Aunt Carol was a nurse. We trusted she knew the difference between male and female dogs. But then the pups started popping out of our new dog. Much to our surprise, Barney was really a Bernice. Still, we stuck with the Barney name.) Schooner was another roadside casualty, as was Captain, as was Jack.
But Lady. She was something special. I never had to deal with the death of Lady. She was protected by monks – a surety always carried within my heart. Nothing bad could happen to her out there with God’s people in a land so special it was named after a saint. She was in heaven before she was in heaven. A lovely thought.
Fast forward to 2012. I was 48. To celebrate my folks’ 50-year wedding anniversary, I decided to gift them with a professional photo session using the bucolic seminary as a backdrop.
As we crossed the seminary’s campus, I recalled Lady. I hadn’t thought about her in decades. Finally, after all these years, my parents and I actually visited the seminary grounds together for the first time. I said to them, “Hey, I wonder if Lady is still here.”
I knew there was no way that Lady could still be alive. Still, it was a comforting thought.
My parents stopped dead in their tracks. They looked at each other without saying a word. After 50 years of living together, I’m sure telepathy came easily for them. They finally looked at me.
“What did you say?” Dad asked.
“You guys brought Lady out here to live.”
“We didn’t bring Lady here,” Mom said.
“Lady and the monks,” I said.
“We didn’t bring a dog here,” Dad said.
“Lady and the monks,” I said again. They were getting up there in years. Obviously, their fading memories needed a jump-start.
They looked at each other again. They both smiled, as if freed from the burden of an ancient lie.
“Lady and the monks?” I persisted.
“We didn’t bring Lady here.”
“My God. All my life I believed Lady was here.”
I recalled Mom telling me about the pet bunnies she and her siblings always got as gifts on Easter. How they were the cutest things. How they would mysteriously vanish after a few months. How fried rabbit was served for dinner the day after each disappearance. This vicious cycle went on for years.
“What the hell happened to Lady?”
I braced myself for an awful truth. She was run over. Shot by a chicken farmer. Fell down a well. My God, did we eat Lady for dinner?
Mom started to relay the bad news, but Dad butted in. “We took Lady to the farm.”
It took a few seconds to process the news. “Thank God,” I said. “I was scared something bad had happened to my Lady.”